Pink Poogle Toy Forum

Remember those great false alarms of the 90's?
The giant meteor that was going to hit the earth and then the Y2K panic...

I'd like to read some opinions and memories of personal experiences about those things.

I unfortunatly didn't get the full effect of the panics. At that age I was craved for action and really would've enjoyed the mass hysteria. My parents didn't talk about it infront of me and said I was forbidden from watching the news. The teachers at my school were told not to talk about it with the students either, so I found out about the meteor about a day ofter the crisis was over hearing "Wow that was a lucky one huh?" and I was like "what the heck are you talking about?" then I got the story and I was allowed to watch the news again and saw how people were freaking out. One group of people thought that the aliens were coming and committed a group suiside on top of a building, pretty crazy eh?

The Y2K thing was almost the same, my father started buying rediculuos ammounts of canned beans and guns without explanation. When I asked why he was doing that he gave me some stupid answer. a few days later I heard about the Y2K bug, how people were saying the world was going to end. I didn't really buy it but I asked my dad about it and he explained that the computers were going to mess up and there would be mass chaos. On the one hand woo hoo finnally something exciting! On the other hand awww beans for dinner again!? I didn't expect that it would ammount to much I mean what was supposedly the reason they thought there would be a problem anyway? From what I understood it was something about computers would think it was the year 1900 instead of 2000 and since computers didn't exist in 1900 they would.. I dunno explode or something. In the end of course nothing happened and I got stuck with a decade worth of beans for dinner.
Urrrg.. XP *sneers at a can of beans*I hate you.

Y2K never affected me. I celebrated the new years... It was a big new years. =\

Dont know why people were so freaked out by it. OMG LOOK A PERFECT NUMBER! Where they afraid that Aliens were gonna attack when the year hit AD?

WIS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y2k

What they expected to happen, did in fact happen, though on a much smaller scale due to the preperations that were made.

Personally, I knew it wasn't going to be that huge of a thing, but it did affect computers in the way that they imagined and the ton of money that was spent in protection from Y2K was possibly well-spent, as if the preperations weren't made, there was the possiblity of losses even larger than the y2k budget.

As for my memories, I was on the computer as soon as the New Year rang in.

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I didn't recognize the word 'internet' back then

Wow! Kuge, I never knew that! Now it makes a lot more sense. It's Family Guy and the Drew Carey Show's fault for making it look like mindless banter!

Heh, back in'99 I didn't have internet but it was available at school. I used to get mad when the discovery chanel would say "to learn more about *insert title like... walking with dinosaurs er something* go to discovery.com" because although I had a computer it didn't have internet access, it was a really old mac version, basicly a video game storage in my case. Now when I hear something like that on television I'm like "yeah whatever, I might get around to it if I'm bored." if I even give it that much thought.

But you know, they are the best educational shows on television.

There are arguments against it even happening or being capable of causing problems. Something think that the problems listed on the Wiki were just coincidental and would have happened regardless, so while it wasn't necessarily mindless banter, it could very well have been a whole lot of nothing.

I was about 13 at the time, though I believed until I read up on it that it was just a huge hozan that had no backing at all and in the end nothing happened, but I guess noting major ever happened in the US anyway (most of the problems were in Japan I guess.

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The change of calendar would (in theory) Reset the computers.
Resetting the computers causes a controlled crash.
Crash means alarms.
Alarms means automated systems kick in.
automated systems proceed to Nuke everything that was lookin' at them funny before the crash.
Hence, the panic.

Course that was the worst-case-scenario.

Hm.. A little story of mine:
I was 13 at the time, living in Toronto. Everyone thought it was going to happen, and freaked out. I knew about it, but I didn't know that everyone was turning their lights and everything out early incase it took too much hydro or something.
And I was looking out the window around 11:30 on my watch, but my watch is always wrong. Looking at all the pretty lights.. pretty lights.. pretty lights.. BAM THE WORLD GOES BLACK! I screamed so loud I set that the resident cop came upstairs because he thought there was a murder in process.

Fun times.

I was in college for Y2K. We went out drinking and didn't worry about any one else and their computer problems.

Side note: They didn't freak out when the year hit AD. ;P AD (or the Common Era) was decided as the year Christ was born (although they were off by a few years).

why that is the most illogical thing I've ever heard, Romans thinking: "Yay we're Christians because Christ is going to get born within a few years"

Congratulations!

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Um... what are you talking about? There's nothing wrong with that he said.

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Thanks to Laq.